I received the following from Amy Starkey c/o Newmarket Racecourses, which may be of interest to some:
Judging by the response (or lack thereof) here, Newmarket may have mistimed the announcement of this change to the 2015 flat programme given that we are only a few weeks away from the Cheltenham Festival and most flat-only followers are still hibernating. Perhaps they should have done this a couple of weeks before the Lincoln? This meeting was originally scheduled for Friday October 16th, the day before Champions’ Day at Ascot. That does present an issue this year as October 9th/10th is just a fortnight after the Rockfel Stakes, Cheveley Park Stakes and Royal Lodge Stakes at the Cambridgeshire meeting, so there may not be too many attempting to double up races. Now that it has moved to the weekend after Arc weekend, featuring two major European two-year-old contests over similar distances, they have had to hike prize money as the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardère was worth €350,000 in 2014 and the Prix Marcel Boussac was worth €300,000. My principal objection is that race planning have committed the cardinal sin of holding this on dead Friday and Saturday – they should have done Saturday and Sunday if they wanted to maximise attendance. Maybe they will revise that in 2016.
